Brands Hatch DTM: Rast resists Muller for Race 2 win

DTM championship leader Rene Rast came out on top in a late duel with Audi stablemate and title rival Nico Muller in Sunday's second race at Brands Hatch.

Rast again made a poor getaway at the start, losing his lead to fellow front-row starter Loic Duval on the run to Paddock Hill Bend, spending the early stages of the race in second.

But the DTM title favourite would return to the lead when he breezed past Duval on the run to Hawthorns at the end of the first lap.

Just behind, Muller had begun to climb his way up the order from eighth after a strong start gained him places before he overtook Audi stablemates Mike Rockenfeller and Jamie Green.

Muller would then move to second when he replicated Rast's move on Duval to breeze past his rival and begin his chase of Rast. But Muller's bid to overhaul Rast took a heavy hit when the pair both pitted at the end of lap 10 of 42.

Rast's pitstop was straightforward, but problems fitting the rear-left tyre on Muller's Audi RS5 DTM cost him five seconds.

Returning in a net second place, once he cleared Frijns and Duval while the pair completed their outlaps, Muller had a gap of 3.3s to make up to the race leader.

A series of fast laps allowed Muller to close within 0.2s at the flag, but he proved unable to prevent Rast from taking his fourth win of 2019.

Frijns completed the podium places in third, boosted by a long-running battle for fourth between Philipp Eng and Rockenfeller.

Eng had started ninth on the grid and ran a long-running first stint that allowed him to have a fresh rubber advantage in his second stint, the Austrian helped by pitting under a slow zone.

The BMW driver cleared Rockenfeller with a smart move on the inside of Surtees but found Duval a much sterner proposition, and head to settle for fifth behind the Frenchman.

Sheldon van der Linde (BMW) took seventh place after he narrowly avoided collecting the spinning WRT Audi of Jonathan Aberdein during their battle for the position.

That spin helped elevate R-Motorsport Aston Martin driver Daniel Juncadella into eighth place, with teammate Jake Dennis running a long first stint to climb from 17th to ninth.

Saturday race winner Marco Wittmann attempted to use a two-stop strategy after his climb from 12th, pitting for a second time under the slow zone, but his gamble did not pay off and the German ended the race in 10th.

Paul di Resta, who led laps on Saturday, ended his race in 14th after a long-running first stint strategy was undone by a slow pitstop, triggered by a radio problem.

Joel Eriksson, who failed to start the Saturday race due to a gearbox-related problem, retired from Sunday's race on after coming to a halt not long after the start/finish line midway through the sprint, triggering the slow zone that aided BMW stablemates Eng and Wittmann.